Book Review: Disrupting Grace by Kristen Richburg

I have two children. I used to have three. My third child didn’t grow up and leave home, she didn’t die. I relinquished her. I stood before a judge and said that I was no longer able to meet her needs. She is living with another family now and has a new last name.

For five years she called me “Mom” Now she calls someone else that. . . . I still wake up each day and go to bed at night asking myself “How did I get here? Were those five years a dream?” Aren’t adoptions stories supposed to have happy endings?

While many adoptions stories do have happy endings, this is not one of them . . .

It’s a well written, engaging story. It makes you want to turn the page.

I wonder if this book is the first of it’s kind. If so, it was needed. People need to understand that ‘relinquishing’ a child is sometimes a needed, wise and godly choice.

I know the author. We prayed for this family while they were going through this story. I’m guessing that writing out this book was helpful for Kristen. Good.

This book will be an encouragement to parents who have experienced difficulty with a child because it will show them that there are other families who go through similar struggles.

This book will be an encouragement to (some) parents who have experienced difficulty with a child because it will show them they don’t have it as difficult as other families. This certainly happened to us. It was a blessing.

This book will encourage those who know others who are having difficulty with a child to not negatively judge.

This book will take away some guilt for families who have (or who are planning to) give up a child.

This book is a helpful case study of severe Attachment Disorder. I had heard about this but now I have a much more complete understanding of what is meant by this title.

The Gospel is uncovered in passages like this:

“. . . Yet, I felt like the Lord was teaching me, revealing to me that the way Emma behaved with me is not unlike the way I behave with God sometimes. Like an unattached child, I am preoccupied with my needs, with what I want. I look to get my needs met with other things or relationships. . . I make choices at times that inflict self-harm. . . . Most importantly, He gives love that I cannot ever work hard enough to earn . . .”

10 . The ending, which is surprisingly uplifting, will help people understand that it is unwise to say that adoptive parents who experience great hardship were foolish to adopt.

11. All this is done in 136 pages. My wife and I read it out loud to each other in less than a week.